It Was My Childfree Friends Who Gave Me The Reality Check I Needed

It was November of 2020 and I was under the blue skies of Palm Springs, alone for the first time in nine entire months. I was experiencing that particular brand of tired and dumb that only comes after having a newborn or caring for children in a pandemic. At the time in my life, I had been crying a lot and living off my kids' discarded chicken nuggets (on good days, I'd add them to a bagged salad) and Zoom-schooling in survival mode. But there in Palm Springs, I remember walking in the backyard and staring at the clouds, my mind entirely empty, when I heard my friend Briana yell, "I made the new Ottolenghi recipe for dinner!"

Briana was my childless, high-powered friend that I got close with in college when we bonded through binge-watching Sex and the City during a snowstorm, then spent a semester attempting to master a pull-up in the gym (spoiler: we didn't). Our lives splintered after graduation — she'd become a producer on a kids' ninja warrior show that had her jet-setting around the world (yes, my kids are obsessed with her) and I settled into parenting my two small kids.

Settling in might be a strong word. It was more like I cannonballed into modern parenting, and then, well, sometimes drowned under the demands of it. In the thick of it, it was Briana and my other friends without kids who helped me see this intensity more clearly, and who eventually helped me find my way back to myself. (There is no one more horrified by child care expenses than my childless friends.)

When I was sent a 9 p.m. text reminder to acquire a balloon for my child's unicycle parade the next day, it was Briana who I texted, and her response was exactly the reality check I needed: “What in the actual hell is a unicycle parade and why does it require YOU to bring a balloon at 9 a.m.?”

Childless friends help me remember that while parenting is part of culture, it isn't the entirety of culture. And I do need that reminder. Culture is art and books and bad memes and haircuts based on TV shows. When my recent reads list is all parenting books, it was my childless friend Lara who sent me Demi Moore's autobiography. This is their gift.

And as my kids grow, my childless friends honestly are often a better source of wisdom than those parenting books. They are able to see my kids as people, not problems to solve.

When I tell Lara about something truly idiotic my son has done, her first response is the one I want to have, that of laughter. She loves to say, “I love that kid” in the way that people talk about a funny uncle or a co-worker, where their annoying aspects are part of a larger tapestry, and not a punch list of things I need to address, correct, or parent out of him.

Childless friends help me remember that while parenting is part of culture, it isn't the entirety of culture.

Lara was also the friend who put a temporary tattoo on my 6-month-old baby's neck, and had me howling with laughter in a season when I mostly howled with exhaustion. She reminded me that just because my baby wouldn't see it or remember it didn't mean we weren't able to have fun. She helped me remember my own joy counts, too.

And they've done this for me even when I haven't been able to return the favor and show up for them the way I'd like. My friendships are so important to me, but there have been times when I haven’t been able to show up like the friend I want to be, because of a season of parenting.

I'm embarrassed to say I have forgotten so many birthdays. I have been unable to go on trips I've been invited on. I have descended, for months, into winter plagues that meant I did not return texts. But over the years, I have found some things that help: I add the important dates of my childless friends to my calendar, because my brain is mush, and I want to remember their work and family events just like they remember and celebrate my kids and all their accompanying celebrations (too many!).

Asynchronous communication is also key — Marco Polo and voice notes are great for this. My schedule is the opposite of my childless friends — weekends and holidays are when I am head-down in parenting and unable to talk, so I catch up on my childless friends' weekend antics on my Monday morning walk after the kids are at school, and I leave a message about our weekend. But the gift of my childless friends is that after I think about the weekend, I also talk about books, politics, and my own dreams — things that are not parenting.

Because often when I have gone underground and radio silent with my childless friends, it wasn't because I thought they wouldn't understand my life. I have, at points, been so sunk by motherhood that a childless friend asking "how are the kids?" has sent me into an existential tailspin. Sometimes I cannot share with them because I cannot share with myself.

My childless friendships remind me that motherhood is madness, and that I am a person beyond it.

I've learned, though, that this is the time to pull out my real secret to friendships of all kinds: petty complaints. When you cannot talk big stuff, you talk small stuff. And you know who doesn't get to complain about petty things to people with kids? CHILDLESS FRIENDS. We are always out here out-complaining our childfree friends, but we should really be asking them for their dumbest, most inane gripes. A good petty complaint session over text can glue a friendship together across years of breastfeeding and gentle parenting and potty training.

It sounds silly, but the glue matters, because those friendships matter. In a culture that demands otherwise, Briana and Lara and Joe and Mel and all my childless friends remind me that my children are not at the center of my life. I am. My childless friends help keep me at the heart of myself, not my motherhood. My connection to myself is the actual motor of my motherhood; my ability to connect to my own feelings just as readily as I identify the feelings of my kids (read that again!) requires having a self that exists beyond being Mom.

When Briana booked a Palm Springs house and secured COVID tests to give me the gift of 24 hours without my kids after seven months of them constantly touching me, she was caring for me in a way that I know no parent could have.

When she called me in from the yard, the dinner table was set with linens with scalloped edges. Briana had set out water and wine glasses. I remember the taste of sweet potatoes and lamb and cinnamon, but mostly I remember lingering. I remember the blue sky outside getting darker, and losing track of the time, for the first time in months, not aware of bedtime, not aware of dishes, just aware of the smell of warmth. And in that moment, I came back to myself.

The balloon for the unicycle parade? I never got it. My kid didn't even notice. But the audio note of my childless friend laugh-crying about it? That was exactly what I needed. My childless friendships remind me that motherhood is madness, and that I am a person beyond it. The expansive blue sky in Palm Springs exists, even when I'm trapped in another bedtime fight. Knowing it's there, knowing the people who anchor me to it, and to the world, are there? They help tether me to myself, motherhood and all.

Kathleen Donahoe writes poems and essays to make women feel seen and powerful. Smart women who regularly shout out her work include: Anne Helen Peterson, Joanna Goddard, Virginia Sole Smith, Evil Witches. She writes free funny essays at alittlelaugh.substack.com and is working on a novel.